


A deity and a demi-god walk into a bar...

by jer832



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anger, Arguing, Dark Comedy, Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7713208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Did you hear the one about the deity and the demi-god who walk into a bar somewhere along the border between the SPN universe and Eternity?  The barman looks up from the little red-headed vixen he's trying to pull, mumbles something their way and launches a bowl down the long counter.  They take two empty bar stools where the bowl comes to rest. Then they begin to fight like brother and sister …</i> </p>
<p>An <span class="u">Interlude</span> after the events of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming. After killing hundreds of mortals and eating their souls, Amara finally has God's attention.  </p>
            </blockquote>





	A deity and a demi-god walk into a bar...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gallifrain Ying-Yang (scifiangel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifiangel/gifts), [JessaLRynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/gifts).



> Two writers are to blame for me trying my hand at this SPN story, so I'm dedicating this to them. 
> 
> There is a scene in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" where Amara comes across a group of faithful Christians and their Preacher. She questions them about God's prolonged absence, motives, and broken promises; gets nothing of value out of them; and smites them. The scene skates along the old familiar questions and complaints-- not bad for tv, but SPN tends to do that. Who can resist a good theological argument and scenery-chewing, even if capitalization decisions drive you crazy and you'll be graded by JessaLRynn and scifiangel?

 

 

           "Was it supposed to be funny," she asks, though the way she says it leaves no doubt that she thinks it probably was, thinks that was just about the funniest and dumbest and most dangerous thing God's ever done and that either his marbles fell through a gaping hole in the firmament right about the time he proclaimed that _It_ was _Good_ , or he was playing at tarot with a stacked deck. From all she's learned of the antics of the Winchesters and their pathetic broken-down schizo sidekick, she'd bet on a very perverse tarot reading. 

She picks a little salty nugget out of the bowl in front of her and nibbles at it. The barman had said they're Brazil nuts, but he works for Crowley so they could be anything, really.

"Funny?" Her quondam twin shrugs. "I won't say it was. Then again, I won't say it wasn't. Did a punchline rimshot drum effect follow? Oh, that's right—you wouldn't have heard it anyway, would you, Sister. You've been… out of touch."

From somewhere off behind them a drum and cymbal sound … _Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_ ... Even though the timing is slightly off, the flourish is unmistakably a comedy punchline rimshot. Little brother indulges what is apparently his whimsical side with a nod and smile over his shoulder to the percussionist and then a wink to her.

Bad luck for the musician, he's just become an intrusion. She won't take him for granted now … won't take _any of them_ for granted, for behind him in the archway that opens the bar's far wall into a large café, keyboards, bass, brass, and what looks like a close-out sale at a guitar store are being set up next to an elaborate espresso station.

Because she is done taking _anything_ for granted, she checks out the dining area beyond the arch. Considering the hour, there are a good number of patrons at the café, some of whom may even be human. The matched furniture, minimal clutter, and general cleanliness give them and the cloyingly pleasant place an air of bland gentility. Lighting from the _beaux arts_ chandeliers and sconces is cool white but not harsh and radiates through frighteningly spotless windows to the _al fresco_ dining terrace. Light breezes and a convenient streetlamp coax the leaves of overhanging Aspens to susurrate soft shadows over scattered tables of lone patrons engaged in reading smart phones and tablets, and drinking lattes, cappuccinos, and espressos. Hemmingway would laugh himself sober over this commune of indifferent solitude, she thinks. As for her own opinion of God's sense of humour, she'll hold her tongue. This bar area, at least, is decent enough with metaphor-free décor and an adequate top shelf, and he did finally show.  When the band starts to play they sound reasonably toilet-trained despite the earlier fit of the percussionist, however no one comes onto the dance floor.

She senses him watching her. No doubt he's waiting for some reaction to the rimshot gag. She shouldn't disappoint him since he was nice enough to wade through all the blood and putrefying corpses to buy her a drink.

"So you intended it to be funny."  She nods, a slight but unambiguous _I suspected as much_ gesture, _chin up chin down_. "Thought you'd try it solo did you, something amusing and clever from the Hand of God. In your first act, the crap I went through after the Biform godhood was destroyed; I bet you laughed out loud at that, didn't you?  And how about the acts that followed! How did the Narrator put it—  'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them.' How funny is all that! I have to say, I giggled myself right into the Intermission." 

She nods again. This gesture is larger, possibly even discernible to the patrons at the other end of the bar. _Chin up chin down_. This time the nod continues, _chin right chin left_. The eye-roll tells him she knows he's just admitted that one of the mortals' strongest belief systems is a big joke, and the look she follows it with makes it unmistakably clear that she thinks it's one of the most self-indulgent things he's pulled since he's been out on his own unchecked.

He looks away, silent. He can't really be thinking it over _now._ Can he? —it's well past too late for excogitation. Excogitation should have come when his first draft was written then followed immediately by a good thorough dumping of it, the story outline, and all his notes along with his aspiration to award-winning Author into the trash bin at the bottom of the Waters beneath the Deep.

Opening Night was a fiasco of bad plot and inconsistent characterization. He did a slipshod reworking of the first act without bothering to rewrite everything in later acts that hinged on the original version, which makes the _Beginning_ not just an incomprehensible piece of teleological crap but bad theatre. Then He of Exalted And Glorious Name packed his valise, set his travel alarm for _Rapture_ , and cut out.

Inexplicably, instead of folding, the damned thing became a huge success with a cult following. God's Groupies know all the lines by heart and scrutinize each one _ad nauseum_ as if Divine Truths dance on each period. They write fanfiction and filk songs, have secret handshakes and wink-wink catch phrases. Ubiquitous conventions feature special guests and costume balls. The scholarly write articles and lecture on why the Problems don't really matter, the shrewdly pragmatic use it as _Canon_ fodder for dirty politics and even dirtier ethics, and the dealers' room is always bustling. On the other hand, the story of the Story has all the makings of a sitcom including a laugh track. This is only _her opinion_ of course, but she has had millennia of personal experience trapped within the subject matter.

When she points that all out to him, God chuckles. "That's why you've come—to critique my work?  Will this be an amicable review or do you require a poisoned pen?" A quill pen appears on the bar in front of her. From the look of it, it's been dipped in something nasty.

She sips at her drink slowly, watching him over the lip of the glass. What is she here for, exactly? Throughout millennia of imprisonment and torture, waiting not very patiently for the mortal who can juggle bestializing power with a code of honour and a fine sense of the Absurd to free her… finally freed, or loosed upon the world as her brother no doubt would say… finally confronting him. Throughout it all, having felt so… furious? No well yes… betrayed? tormented?... all that too of course with scars to prove it, but mostly… curious?… yes. 

"I'm curious."  

"And you think I can help sate your curiosity?"

"I know you can."

God slides the bowl closer, scoops up a handful of the nutty stuff of questionable origin and pops it all into his mouth. He chews slowly with relish. She well remembers her little brother's own dark little Appetites, so it proves nothing about the contents of the bowl one way or another. It may, however, signal that answers won't be as easy to acquire as souls.

"Next round's on you, Big Sister." He downs what's left of his drink, waves the bartender over and orders another Bloody Mary very bloody. She asks for the most expensive bottled water they have. Her voice follows their server: "With a twist. There always has to be a twist, you know."

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

She rolls her eyes.

Some innocent who doesn't know that a dumbass sense of humour hides in his racial consciousness drops a coin into a prefab antique jukebox at the other end of the bar, watches the fake vinyl drop and spin, and begins to sing along. _"… Come on - come on let me show you where it's at - Ah, come on - come on let me show you where it's at… I said the name of the place is I like it like that…"_   He drowns out the band, which is a shame because she recognizes the opening of _"Born Under a Bad Sign"_ , and for that sin alone she should terminate the fool, especially as her brother is now clapping and singing along.

Her eyes rest on a pair of supernatural beings at a corner table who have been very carefully not looking their way. It's obvious the misallied allies have been plotting, no doubt of the belief that heaven and hell are at stake, which of course they are. As they listen to the record they begin to argue vehemently just _Whose Place_ this place is and what there is to like. They can't help but take the song literally, it's in the warp and weft of them. Again she thinks of Hemmingway and by natural progression the old waiter who was more efficient than this place's whelp of a barman.

In the guitarists' fingers she hears the men they once were, the band will own the night. Deity that she is, then, she will be magnanimously patient for the record to end, the mortal to return to his table, and her brother to stop making an ass of himself. She grits her teeth and smiles. But when God tries to drag her off the bar stool to dance she slaughters the jukebox. He thinks it's funny.

"So, Sis, since you arrived in my neighborhood, rumor is you've been busy taking in the sights and the souls of my faithful as they're being all faithfully. Like this last Sunday in the park with gore."

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

Ah, he of the Nine Billion Names is a Sondheim fan and a punster. High theatre and low comedy. More things make sense to her now, including the annoying drum and cymbal flourishes that had followed fast upon her quip and now upon his. Before God can wink and nod and smile she turns and glares at the percussionist. He loses his sticks and cowers.

"As I said, I'm curious."

"There's an old saying, _Curiosity killed the clergyman_ ," he muses, then titters and snorts when a perfect drum flourish follows. He is _so full_ of himself.

"The stubbornly mistaken holy man got your attention. It was all in the service of testing a theory."

"Theory," he asks as their drinks arrive and the barman retreats to an obsequious hover.

"Catechism, then. A metaphysics of irrational Reality, Dialectic of Humanism of the brainwashing variety. An upside-the-head _Weltanschauung._  You've got just about everyone still thinking you are omniscient, omnipotent, and supremely beneficent."

"Where on the sliding scale of acceptance did you alight?" 

"Just this side of benevolent and merciful."

He throws back his Bloody Mary, slides the empty glass to the edge, and gestures for another. "What can I say, my dear Dark Sister, I do enjoy a good paradox. _Paradox_ ; from the Latin _paradoxum_ and the Greek _paradoxos_ , meaning opposed to existing notions." He smiles.

The look she gives him can't completely conceal the pain of personal betrayal at all he's done to her and her Good Name for the sake of his arrogant, cruel, malignant Name.

Something is rising in the café, she can feel it in the short hairs on her neck and down her spine. It ignites with a hoarse cry and surges toward the bar. Dirge for a soul lost to the torments of _Brotherly Love_? ... for _yes_ she is certain now that the eternal Duality she'd thought they shared with joy was a lie, certain that he had counted on her never escaping _his_ eternity. And she is certain that he's being too cool not to have something up his sleeve.

Fearing that something unnamable has tracked her and found her, she turns, not quite in a panic to fight it.  But no, it's just a Gibson double-neck tuning up. She calms herself as the host of guitarists riff on _"Stairway to Heaven"._ The percussionist contributes nothing to the jam session, probably because he's afraid of being slaughtered. The thought buoys her spirits. She enjoys a handful of Brazil nuts. Or metacarpals. Or testicles. Or scoria of lost souls. Whatever.

He is watching her, smiling boyishly. The Unknowable One, God of the Israelites, the holy Trinity, Allah, Al-Haqq, the Head Honcho, the Big Kahuna, can't pull off the look.

_"Promise_ ," she parries, "from the Latin _promissum_ , to send forth. See _Gospel_ , verb and noun forms; from the ancient Greek _euangélion_ — denotative meaning, good news; connotative meaning, effective brainwashing technique. See also _fiction, myth, falsehood, deception_ ; from the lying-through-his-teeth mouth of the power-crazed, double-crossing, perfidious, sadistic God of Ages."  

Okay, apparently she is majorly hacked-off furious, but that's not even close to how curious she is.

She's curious why he went off on his own. She is curious how he who boasts omniscience could not have known that withdrawing his presence from the abiding binary godhood would rent and mutilate it, cause the Biformity to bleed out and gravely wound her. And having expended so much energy and will, and creating so much… worlds and life of all sorts, spirits of all stations and all kinds… in fact he accomplished so very little that was properly good— She wonders about that too.

She is curious why the Author of All That Is didn't bother to proofread his revised version of creation before he wrote his seven days plus several hundred thousand millennia out of the chaos he had made, and why he didn't stick around to make sure that all he'd constructed with Words and Dominion that he'd brutally torn out of the Deity Biform would work well enough in the emergent Deity Singularity not to drag his creation down under the weight of itself. She is quite curious to know why he bothered to do it at all, actually, since it's obvious to her now that he really didn't care. And _that_ makes her so very curious why— No. What she is so very curious to know is what it was he had cared about _more_.

She's curious just how exactly he got himself so drunk on wanton conceit and addicted to supreme controlling power, and if he'd always planned to leave her wounded majesty bound and shackled, suffering all sorts of sadistically imaginative torture.  Which reminds her, she's very curious why he created time, and why he made it run down around her like leviathans' teeth shredding the skin off eternity. And why he made sure she is unable to forget the soul-eating unending Silence pierced throughout by screams of the slowly dying, exsanguinated godhood. And why—

Well, she is just _really altogether, utterly, flat-out fucking_ curious. In her opinion what he did was all just way beyond sibling rivalry even as jealous, demanding, treacherous, insane gods go.

"Say I do sate your burning curiosity," he says, and she wonders fleetingly if he's still able to know her mind, "then what?"

**"** Then I'll decide if I'm going to turn the other cheek and risk captivity and torture again or do unto you, you little _bastard_ , as you did unto me."

"Temper, kiddo, temper." God _tsk-tsks_ her. "I was a cosmogonic Luke Skywalker," he says, sounding exactly like Sir Alec, which he knows irks her almost as much as his James Earl Jones, "wielding my Light sabre against your rod of Darkness for the good of my beloved universe and my flock of Little Sinners in need of Redeeming." ~~~~

"Since you brought it up," she says, sounding exactly like herself, " _Lucifer_ , from the Latin _lux,_ light and _–fer_ , bringing; light-bringing. And _Gabriel_ , from the Hebrew _Gav-ri-ale_ , meaning God is my strong man." She won't mention Castiel yet. —Now _there's_ a paradox that he didn't fashion and will never control, and she's sure it drives him spare. "While we are on the subject of etymology, let me just remind you quickly: _Satan_ —from the Hebrew and Aramaic _sah-tahn_ , meaning an adversary or accuser; in context, _lih-sah-tahn_ , meaning the adversary, the accuser."

"They don't study derivations in the schools anymore," he reflects as he helps himself to more munchies. "It could be a money crunch or time constraints or a shortage of qualified teachers, or maybe they just don't care."

"But it's not always from ignorance is it, Brother. In this award-winning story of yours, the light bearer character has so much potent and malignant hunger along with all the beauty. And you've cast the adversary into the role of villain who remains locked away beneath the firmament whilst the devil dances. Do you call that high tragedy, theatre of the absurd or dramatic irony sucked into a maelstrom of farce?"

"Aha," he chuckles, "everyone's a critic. What can I say—I do enjoy a good pasquinade."

No drum flourish, no wink and nod and smile. But no smiting for a missed rimshot either. She finds it very interesting that neither God nor his lapdog percussionist has treated God's statement as a comedy gag line.

"That's another thing I really don't get— this blind faith that mortals have in you. From their first torment by baptism, your perfidy is clear. The only thing consistent about you is that everything you have ever done and said, and all that has ever been set down about you, are lies." She considers where she's been and how she got there, remembers every agonizing entombed moment. "Except that you're full of wrath."

"Wrath?" He chuckles quietly. "You've had way too much time on your hands."

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

Thinking how satisfying it would be to garrotte him, she smiles almost amicably. "Fine, unsportsmanlike behaviour. You were full of unsportsmanlike behaviour when you rent the biform essence of our abiding splendor, shackled my aspect—"

"Ooh, such big pretty words from such a bad little girl," he chides her amiably as she glares at him. He raises his hand to where his heart should be if he had one. "I was only trying to be a good brother." ~~~~

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

Though the musician's timing is impeccable, she'd seriously consider offing him except that she and God are sprawled on the bar, holding their midsections and each other and laughing. To identify himself at his debased worst, her once-complement has used Sondheim at his best, and that's just so ridiculous that even the eavesdropping bartender is laughing aloud. They extend their siblings' _Hallmark Moment_ to do something about him and leave the mess for Crowley to clean up.

"Your darkness completed my light. You made our eternal duality neat, you made it perfect. The perfect enduring majesty of a binary godhood. Sinisterly perfect. Fatally perfect. Yes. A Nothing from which no Something could ever free itself. I was stuck in the cosmographical binary muck with the _you_ that you were content to be, part of something that could only ever be _wrong_. You dimmed my light, you were bleeding off my wattage, impeding me and unmaking me. That is to say, in case you are finding it hard to follow, Twin, you were generally fucking up who I meant to be. In you were the body and face and soul of inertia. You kept Things from Happening. Things needed to Happen. Entropy needed to Happen." He thrumps himself on the chest. "I the Almighty surmounted the cosmographical muck. I destroyed the Deity Biform and transformed us into something —" He searches for a word, "— _else_.  We were new and unstable and dangerous, and I loved it! I owned all the Words and with them I brought Chaos from Order," he gloats, mangling one of his press releases into a truth. "My majesty blazes with our Power and our Glory! I have crushed Darkness. I am the Light, and this is my world. It could not begin with you. It will _NOT_ end in you."

She studies him. "Why are you smiling like that," he asks belligerently. She isn't sure if he has underestimated her fury or fully realizes and is trying to throw her off kilter. But no matter. He's a bully and a baby and this place, neither clean nor well-lighted when she looks at it straight on, is getting on her nerves.

"You want unstable and dangerous? You want new?" She laughs quietly, "well, after a fashion. I am fury and wrath, I am Divine Justice revealed, capricious, implacable, and remorseless. I am the nightmare your angels dread and the Hell your humans believe in. I am baptism by torment. Your creations will know that God's Mercy is clear and uncertain and unearned. That is to say, in case you are finding it hard to follow, Twin, I have no intention of leaving. I'm following my little brother into the family business." She flutters her eyelashes at him because it drives him spare.

"You've mastered a few tricks since you've been walking in my world and you talk a good talk, but you don't have the balls.

"Don't kid yourself, they weren't all that impressive when you were the male countenance of the One. And from what I've seen of your accomplishments out on your own, I'd say you left them behind when you split."

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

He explodes, not literally of course although the dim barroom lights do flare up briefly. "Have some more fun before the Evil Darkness is vanquished by the Light…go, go with my blessing. But you will never be anything more than the weak half of broken Power."

"You know that I can teach your flock what Darkness and Light really are. They will look upon our countenances, their eyes will be opened, and they will believe  _me_."

"You know that I will not allow it. I will not tolerate an endgame. There can be only one God."

" _Have no other gods before me?_ "  She makes a very rude sound. "I heard you made a market killing when your stock split."

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

The percussionist nailed the flourish, she smiles and nods at him. God, however, does not look quite so pleased. She punches his shoulder amiably. "With so many willing investors, what's one more dummy corporation?" 

"Doomed," he scoffs. "An ascetic young carpenter, unshaven older George Clooney type, and ubiquitous shape-shifter will always get better press than the naked tree-huggers, cauldron-stirring bitches, putative whores, and virgin mommies that have tried to slip past the gatekeeper.  _My world_ murmurs and resounds with the adorations of my faithful and the invectives of the fallen. The true believers are bearded and beaded and knotted, their heads are wrapped and capped and bowed, their knees are bent, and they are verily into ablutions and abstinence between bloodbaths."

"Isn't that a bit long for a bumper sticker."

He chuckles, he does.

"Your goddesses will fail again, they'll slip in the blood of my paschal lambs and the golden calf will screw them over."

What a swaggering misogynistic tool! But she lets him crow. In terms his little human puppets would understand, she's getting the fool's whole confession down on tape. She's almost giddy with the intensity of her exultation. "There's a cure for Dissociative Identity Disorder now," she informs him, apropos of everything.

He glowers. Now THAT is a look her quondam brothertwin can pull off. He throws back what's left of his bloody Bloody Mary and looks around for someone to give him a refill, but not even Crowley's stooges are dumb enough to take the terminated barman's place. He conjures over a bottle of House red, pours it himself, and drinks. She matches him with a bottle of House white. One must always be cognizant of the Power of symbols.

"You looked for me, you've found me," he says, sounding almost as pissed off as she. "Take advantage of my temporary beneficence, Sister; for unlike my flock of little mortals, you can't make me go snap, crackle, and extra-crispy. What do you really want? One Question. Then one Answer."

She wills him to face her as equals, deity to deity, to meet her eyes, but he doesn't; so maybe he can't still know her mind after all.

On the other hand, maybe he does. "On the power of our Words," she says levelly, letting him infer emphasis where he will. ~~~~

"One Question, one Answer," he replies with a snigger. "Then you are going back to chain and torture, flailed and flayed, filthy with the blood of the pure of heart and cursed by the mouths of the true believers." He smirks. "On the Power of _My_ Words." ~~~~

God is too confident. She is neither the naïve partner she was nor the powerless captive he made her, and he keeps missing something very important. But she wants him to answer her almost as much as she wants him to end up exactly as she'd been— broken and abandoned in that terrible solitude beyond existing, writhing in agony as time bleeds impossibility and his cries join the cries of deposed gods marking the winding down of eternity. "Your words, then," she nods, giving up nothing but a singular possessive pronoun.

"Why, Brother?  Why loose chaos with the delusion it can be harnessed? Why go to all the trouble of Creation but opt for cheap cheesy tricks and abandonment? Why construct a pristine world and put the means to violate it in the writing on the walls of madmen's' palaces and lobbyists' offices, and on YouTube?  Why splinter triads out of a vital binary? Heaven, earth, hell... "

"Abiding Spirit, Father, and Son."

" _Me myself and I._ Yes of course, although I have to wonder.  What kind of deity would destroy a functioning binary godhood then stop to masturbate?  Or steal Power to create but ruin all of his creation constructing irreparably dysfunctional triads disguised as a union of contraries? What purpose is served in splitting mortal beings into body, mind, and soul?  And why disunite the moral consciousness you cursed them with into idea, intention, and act?  It wasn't to accommodate the span of the free will you gave them because you ever only punish them for using theirs."

"Yada yada yada," he mutters too quietly for the percussionist to hear so she gets no clue if his answer is a Biblical allusion or a Seinfeld reference. She finds that beautifully appropriate since the final act has gone to editing.

"In the park today, I laid reality out before a flock of your free and spiritual, and gutted it. Then I gave them a real choice: life if they accept the God that their experience has revealed, death if they hold to their fantasy of you. I made a fountain run with blood, but not even one of your most recognizable miracles moved them to think for themselves. I took their preacher, and still they believed you would come to save them. Your God is never there for you; why do you still believe, I asked. Just explain that and I will spare you. Where is God—he is turned away from you. And if he ever does turn to you it is not with an outstretched arm but a raised fist. Why do you still believe?"

"They died in faith."

"They died in the northwest field off parking lot D," she corrects him. "Because of you they also died in agony and still delusional."

"My toys, my rules. I'm the only game in town. But I'm on sabbatical. Left the sanctuary. Out to lunch and gone fishing." He looks at her through his sincere face. "What is a good soul supposed to do?"

She expects a drum flourish. It doesn't come.

"In exchange for an empty Promise and a humiliating afterlife, your faithful live their meaningless lives deaf to anything that isn't the Still Small Voice they'll never hear, blind to all but the hollow majesty they believe is too hallowed to look upon. You've driven your creations stupid and crazy trying to understand you and foolish trying to make you love them. Spreading God's teachings of love, they are merciless to each other. Their tragedy is that you don't give a damn. And the joke is that the deceitful, uncaring, sad, dirty little obscene lives they live fully emulate yours."

" _In His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them_ ," he reminds her in just the way a divinity school professor would, and now he uses his own voice. He smiles and looks quite Godly.

She's got to hand it to him. Their daily bread has everything it says on the label. She stares into the so-called great inscrutability of him and he blinks first.

"Before you get any more _holier than Thou_ , Sister," he snaps, "remember that you are the bad guy in this morality play, the scary evil Darkness that would murder Divine Light. What did you do as soon as you got free? You killed indiscriminately and feasted on people's souls." He smiles and leans in for a big confidence. "Gotta tell you, kiddo, that does not engender reverence and love." He winks. "But it does build a solid reputation."

She shrugs it off; at least she's honest about her eating habits. "You really don't give a damn about them, do you?"

"Why do you care so much about them," he asks her.

"I don't. "

"What have you been doing with the souls?"

The schmuck hasn't figured it out for himself yet? So much for omniscience. She smiles enigmatically. She likes enigmatic, it suits her. She fills her glass from his bottle and raises it in one hand; in her other, the bowl of what might be all-natural unsweetened zygotes. "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food." She doesn't spoil it with a snigger and she's quite proud of that.

"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," he adds before they drink up, and he sounds frighteningly sincere. "Mortals have such short memories, they constantly need solid reasons to believe in heaven and hell. How serendipitous that they are adept at finding them on their own."

He pours himself another glass and offers her a refill. She wonders if he's turned it to blood now. He watches her watching him. He's damn beautiful and damn ugly in the blinding light which obnubilates all knowledge. She accepts the wine and drinks. It's still only Merlot masquerading. He sniggers, and he's back to himself. A stony self-satisfied smile looks right on him, she decides. Not good, just right. She quite likes him better looking like this.

"It's always good for the complacent to see what great horrors occur when false gods and presumptuous goddesses try to usurp my kingdom while my eyes are averted from my flock and their nasty little sins. It wouldn't take much to get them to lay the blame for you on a fallen angel. Castiel does have it coming." For a moment the supercilious little prick reminds her of Crowley.

There's still no one on the dance floor. The band won't get paid tonight but they obviously don't give a damn. She watches Johnson, Harrison, King, Bloomfield, and Hendrix jamming _"Crossroads"_. She smiles, not just because she knows the actual story behind that  _deal with the devil_ legend of Johnson's. They are burning up the place. They finish when they feel like stopping, and she adds enthusiastically to the applause and whistles they deserve.

She turns back to him. "All we were, Twin, why destroy all we were? Why did you turn on me? Why steal my potency? Why the indifferent sadism and torture once you withdrew? Were you merely tolerating me all along? Didn't the twinned majesty provide your ego enough to feed upon? Surely my countenance sustained you well enough." She is taken by a queer dispassion. "Or did yours sustain me too well?  But that makes no sense— if you feared me, why didn't you destroy me when I was so weak? Why hurt me so? Why? Why did you do it?"

"I agreed to answer one question. _ONE_. Which is that question?"

"Why all of it, _that_ is my question. Treacherous little psychopath, look at me!  Look true, it is a God who looks back at you. Shall I shroud your world with Darkness and make the waters run with the blood of your slaughtered lambs?"  She gives him a look that arrests him and shows him she's fucking dead-on serious. "Answer true, a God demands it!  Oh, I know you— you think it would kill you to accept that I am your equal.  But note. It may kill you not to accept."   

He fills his glass, and that which flows out of the bottle does not pour like wine. He drinks deeply and long, yet the glass remains full. She wonders if he seriously intends to go on with his obscene farce and where she would end it after all. They watch each other and neither blinks.

At last he nods. "Very well, Amara, let's finish this now."

He's never finished anything and she doubts he ever will, unless one day he actually does finish off his creations. But it's late, they both are tired and covered with blood, and she's fed up. She almost matches him soul for soul now, Power rises in her like a tempest.

He puts down his glass, moves the munchies out of the way, and faces her. Brothertwin Aspect and Sistertwin Aspect once but no more, Deity to Deity. Their eyes meet and hold. Their majesties rise and brush like the wings of the cherubim atop the repository of his worthless pledge. 

" _Why_ , you ask." 

The Light of Revelation is upon him  ~ ~  he who with Words that were not his but his alone created all that is, and on the seventh day said _It is good_ when in every other god's estimation it all pretty much sucked  ~ ~   he who demanded there be no other gods before him but fudged the definition  ~ ~  he who imparted knowledge and threw in free will at a small additional cost  ~ ~  he who commanded the Moral Law then cut and ran, leaving the female Aspect of their Biform Godhood in shackles, heaven and hell in turmoil, righteous justice a hollowed-out mess, and his Chosen holding the bag. He stretches forth his arms and encompasses the world of his creation. And unto her whom he has verily wronged he gives… the punchline.

"Why _not_?"

_Bah-dom-chhhhkkk_

A perfect rimshot flourish. Timing is _everything_.

She finds herself shackled to the bar with bonds of eternal light. The sadistic prick's got a thing for demonstrating that he can overpower her with a stolen Word and his will. He forgot that she's got Dean Winchester up her sleeve. She blows on the shackles with lips that her boy's lips have touched, and they fall away like the shards of a shattered glass vase, or the future of a future debunked godhead. With a look she brings an eruption out of the wine bottle, turning it in its violence from House red to water. God the almighty watches – amused or dumbfounded or awed, it's all the same to her. She is darkness and free will and passion and ire. Power caresses her majesty. There will be Heaven and Hell and perhaps all of God's creations to pay.

But first, as she saunters out of the bar to find Dean Winchester, one more joke. One more clever word, though neither her own nor her Last. One more quip, one more gag and one more punchline, one more throwaway not counting this poor world and its battered creatures and what she might decide to do.

It's not Sondheim, it's Henny Youngman. She backhands the mismatched eternals plotting in the corner and sends the percussionist a _pain of death_ warning look as she gives her exit line to the coming storms of Darkness.

"Take my brother… please."

There is no punchline rimshot.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. The narrator is loosely based on the Amara/Darkness character (eater of souls) in the tv series "Supernatural". Amara and other recognizable SPN characters were created by Eric Kripke and his writers. Other deities, fictional and/or supernatural characters are author-created or loosely based on entities in _The Tanakh (The Bible), New Testament_ , and other religious texts and not intended as traditional interpretations. Creation quotes are from _The Tanakh_. All statements, opinions, and arguments between Darkness and God are solely for the purpose of this story; no insult to any religion or person(s) is intended.
> 
> The guitarists are Robert Johnson, George Harrison, B. B. King, Mike Bloomfield, and Jimi Hendrix. The Johnson legend can be _googled_.  
>   
>  The creative works, authors, and characters referenced are: "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" – by Ernest Hemmingway; "I Like it Like That" – by Chris Kenner and Allen Toussaint; "Born Under a Bad Sign" – by William Bell and Booker T. Jones; "Into the Woods" – by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine; "The Nine Billion Names of God" – by Arthur C. Clarke; "Stairway to Heaven" – by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant; "Star Wars" – (Eps 4 – 6 trilogy) created by George Lucas; "The Spanish Inquisition" - by Monty Python's Flying Circus; "Crossroads" – by Robert Johnson.
> 
> I receive no monetary compensation and have no creative or ownership interest in "Supernatural" or any characters, stories or songs referenced or alluded to in this story.


End file.
